Obtaining a list of prospective customers is at the heart of any marketing plan. Marketers use prospect lists to grow the customer base of a company. Generally, marketers obtain a prospect list (or lists) and then select a subset of suitable prospective customers from the list or lists obtained.
Prospect lists can be obtained in many ways. For example, prospect lists can be obtained directly from the source of the list, referred to as the “list source”, through a manager of the list, referred to as the “list manager”, or through a broker of prospect lists, referred to as a “list broker”. A list source is generally an originator of one or more prospect lists. Exemplary list sources include magazine subscriptions, sweepstakes entries, club memberships, and product purchases. A list manager generally manages the distribution of a prospect list on behalf of one or, typically, many list sources. A list broker works with list managers to obtain prospect lists on behalf of list purchasers, such as marketers.
The nature of each prospect list provides information about the attributes of the prospects contained in the list. For example, a person who subscribes to a bicycling magazine is typically interested in bicycling. There are prospect lists for virtually any hobby, interest, sport, etc. Marketers can use prospect attributes to select a prospect list and target prospective customers on the prospect list that are likely to be interested in the product or service offered by the marketer.
In addition, a prospect list may include attributes of the prospects on the list that are specific to each prospective customer. For example, a bicycling magazine may track the type of bicycle a subscriber owns. These attributes can be used as “selects”—criteria through which a subset of prospective customers from the prospect list can be obtained. For example, “bicycle type” might be a select for the bicycle magazine prospect list. Thus, a marketer can choose a subset of prospective customers from the prospect list by selecting only those prospects having a bicycle type identified as Schwinn. Marketers can use selects to further refine a prospect list and to maximize responsiveness to marketing efforts.
Selecting a prospect list is a daunting task given the wide variety of prospect lists available. For this reason, it is often necessary for list purchasers to employ the help of a list broker. List brokers are generally knowledgeable about prospect lists that are currently available and keep track of new lists as they become available. A list broker can provide the list purchaser with prospect lists specific to the needs of the list purchaser, as well as any additional selects provided by the prospect lists. The list purchaser can select a prospect list or lists from the lists provided by the list broker and additional selects for each selected list. The list broker can then contact each of the list managers corresponding to the selected prospect lists to obtain a count of the prospective customers that meet the requirements of the list purchaser. Once the count is obtained, the list broker can calculate the cost, finalize the cost with the list purchaser, and place the order.
Working with a list broker, although useful, is time consuming, as selecting a prospect list can require much iteration. Some companies, referred to as “online aggregators”, provide list purchasers with immediate access to prospect lists through the Internet. Two examples of online aggregators are MySoftware and infoUSA. Online aggregators aggregate (directly or indirectly through a third party) many prospect lists into a large database and provide a uniform way to select names from the database. The benefit of such an approach is the speed of obtaining prospect lists. A drawback is decreased accuracy, as important contextual information concerning the prospects on the lists is lost as the data is aggregated. The loss of information makes selecting a highly targeted subset of prospective customers from the aggregated database very difficult. For example, it may not be possible to select Schwinn bicycle owners from the aggregate database because that attribute information is lost during the aggregation process.